and that both routes should still be shown. However, back in 1951, the year the Pennine Way was designated and over a decade before it was formally opened, the Sheffield and Peak District branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England held a Local Pennine Way Conference at Edale, where some speakers registered their unease that a waymarked path could be routed across the middle of Kinder Scout in the first place. Might it not compromise the mountain’s wild spirit, some asked, or lead novice ramblers into difficulties?
In the end, of course, the Pennine Way did indeed go up Grindsbrook Clough and across the centre of Kinder Scout, without signposts or a prominent line of cairns; and despite it being switched to Jacob’s Ladder, the original route is still a public right of way (and it’s all designated open access land anyway) so you can still walk it if you choose. But, as I tried to shelter from the gusting rain to check the map, shivering slightly despite several layers of clothing, I couldn’t help but think that the bigger challenge for the novice Pennine Way walker is simply getting over Kinder Scout in the first place.
There were some other ramblers dotted about the Downfall, huddling in slender rock crevices munching soggy sandwiches and looking stoical. I decided to power on through the murk and get off the summit. At the far north-western tip of Kinder Scout, the path descended steeply to Ashop Head and, all of a sudden, I dropped below the cloud line, the rain stopped and at last I could see. Below me, the Pennine Way veered right at Mill Hill on a long, slabbed path across Featherbed Moss. To the left, a path came up a small side valley called William Clough, on its way from distant Hayfield. It was along here, on Sunday 24 April 1932, that a group of ramblers answered a blast on a whistle by leaving the established right of way to scramble up the slopes in defiance of a line of gamekeepers. It was to become one of the most celebrated moments in the history of the outdoor access movement and, looking back now, was inextricably linked to the ensuing long fight to create the Pennine Way.
The story of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass has been told many times and there’s no need to repeat it in great detail here, except to underline how completely Kinder Scout was out of bounds to the general public. Access was restricted to a handful of relatively short and hard-won public rights of way, all of which kept off the really high ground. The actual trespass itself was relatively brief and by all accounts the group from Hayfield didn’t actually get to the very top of Kinder Scout, but it was nevertheless a highly symbolic act. They met up with a contingent who had come over from Sheffield, probably around 400 strong in total, and both groups soon returned their separate ways. In fact, many of the established ramblers’ federations didn’t support the trespass, amid claims that the organisers, the left-wing British Workers’ Sports Federation, were hijacking the campaign for their own political ends. One or two leading ramblers even felt that the wider battle for access would actually be put back by their actions. Despite this, the event made lurid newspaper headlines, not so much because of the trespass itself but due to the harsh reprisals that followed. Following arrests, five ramblers were found guilty on charges of occasioning bodily harm and incitement to cause a riotous assembly, and were sentenced to jail for terms ranging from two to six months. It added to the sense of injustice and galvanised public opinion further. A few weeks later, up to 10,000 ramblers took part in a rally in the Winnats Pass, in the Peak District near Castleton, to call for greater public access.
Although the campaigners might not have seen eye to eye over the Kinder Scout event, with some at the time suggesting that the trespass itself would soon be forgotten, it was in fact one of a series of rallies and protests that were steadily growing in number and intensity as people objected to the denial of basic public access. As far back as 1826, a court case at Flixton, near Manchester, had been fought over the closure of local paths. It led to the formation of the Manchester Association for the Preservation of Ancient Public Footpaths, which later became the Peak & Northern Footpaths Society, whose familiar and reassuring dark-green signposts still guide ramblers across the Pennines to this day. (In fact, there are a number of these signposts on this opening stage of the Pennine Way, perhaps most helpfully a low post at a path junction on Mill Hill indicating the direction of the Pennine Way to the Snake Pass Inn and Bleaklow.) Seventy years later, in 1896 there was a celebrated trespass on Winter Hill, in the West Pennine Moors above Bolton, when local people protested against the landowner’s decision to close off a well-used public right of way.
At first glance, this fight for the freedom of the open moors might seem a little disconnected from the Pennine Way, which was opened over three decades after the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass took place; but the genesis of Britain’s first long-distance path lies in the struggle for the right to walk in the hills – a struggle that defined the modern access movement and ultimately secured the freedoms that we now enjoy today. It’s no coincidence that the Pennine Way begins in Britain’s first national park, the Peak District, created by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which also, of course, paved the way for long-distance paths. A little over 50 years later, the Peak District was also where the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 was officially rolled out, extending a right of open access to mapped mountain, moor, heath, down and registered common land and opening up further significant areas of the Pennines. Indeed, in the Peak District National Park alone, it more than doubled the amount of accessible open country to over 200 square miles. As I began to learn on my journey northwards, the Pennine Way’s story is about far more than a simple path.
I trotted along the straight and seemingly unending line of paving stones across Featherbed Moss with something akin to renewed vigour. Looking back, I could just make out the impressive rocky battlements of Kinder’s upper northern face. Once they disappeared from sight into the mist, I plodded on and, after what seemed like ages, finally reached the top of the Snake Pass, where the trail crosses the A57. It’s a featureless and rather forlorn place. I took some photos, mainly I think just to record the fact that I had got there.
The Snake Pass has itself played a part in the great Pennine Way adventure, albeit rather a sorry one. There are tales of miserable, limping walkers throwing in the towel when they reach the A57, less than ten miles from the start at Edale, and wearily trudging the two and a half miles down the road to the Snake Pass Inn, or even west to Glossop. Others use the location to jettison unwanted items. A national park ranger told me that they regularly find what they believe is the detritus from Pennine Way walkers dumped by the side of the road. Apparently the most commonly found items are lightweight tents and tins of baked beans.
Over the years, the rangers have quite frequently had to come to the aid of Pennine Way walkers in difficulties. Until he retired in 2002, Gordon Miller was a national park ranger for over three decades and for much of that time covered Kinder Scout and the start of the Pennine Way from his home at Edale. He and three other volunteer rangers walked the entire path in 1966, but after that most of his work was spent assisting fellow walkers, since he also helped out with the local mountain rescue team. After completing my Pennine Way walk, I met up with him in the Old Nags Head at Edale and he remembered a particular episode. ‘One day we had a call that a Pennine Way chap had fallen over some rocks and was hurt. We went up to find that his backpack was so huge and so heavy, piled high above his head with all kinds of stuff, that when he stopped to peer over some rocks he literally toppled over as his centre of gravity shifted and he lost control. He fell some way and was quite badly hurt, with broken bones, but we got him down OK. However, it took two of us to carry his pack down the hill because it was so heavy.’
Gordon (who during his 34 years at the national park was affectionately known as ‘Gordon the Warden’) also recalled some of the other bizarre sights witnessed at the start of the Pennine Way during the early days of the trail. Brenda Smith, former landlady of the Church Hotel (now the Rambler Inn), told him about the Japanese gentleman who set off to walk the Pennine Way in the late 1960s with a donkey – to the understandable bemusement of local people. Although no one knows exactly what happened, apparently he returned three days later, tied up his beast at Edale and set off again to walk the path, but this time on his own.
‘In the early 1970s, there was also an enterprising reporter from the Daily Express who declared he was going to complete
